Maximal Onset Principle as a cue for syllable detection at birth



Gonzalo García-Castro

sap2024-mop-newborns | 2025-12-09

gongcastro

gongcastro

Discrete units in the continuous speech signal

From Meyer (2018).

The syllable: a privileged linguistic unit?

Newborns (and adults) preferentially parse the speech signal into syllable-sized units (e.g, Bijeljac-Babic, Bertoncini, and Mehler 1993; Fló et al. 2022; Luo and Poeppel 2007; Jusczyk and Derrah 1987; Bertoncini et al. 1988)

From Fló et al. (2022).

Syllabic structure

Structure Onset Nucleus Coda
V a
CV t a
CVC t a n
VC a n

Language-specific constraints to syllabic structure

Adapted from Özer (2024).
Structure Japanese Spanish English
V u.mi o.jo a.ny
CV ya.ma.ha ca.sa fai.ry
CVC hon.da rin.cón con.trol
CCVC fres.co fresh
CCVCC trans.por.te shrink
CCCVCCC strengths

Maximal Onset Principle (MOP)

Consonants are preferably grouped at syllabic onset

  • MOP+: CV.CCV - /mo.pla/
  • MOP-: CVC.CV - /mop.la/

Are newborns sensitive to (violations of) the MOP?

fNIRS: differential haemodynamic response1 to MOP+ and MOP- stimuli.

Hypothesis 1: If newborns are sensitive to violations of the MOP, the haemodynamic responses to MOP+ and MOP- words should differ (morphology of the signal).

mo.pla \(\neq\) mop.la

Are newborns sensitive to (violations of) the MOP?

Hypothesis 2: If newborns have an innate preference for MOP+ structures, the haemodynamic response to MOP+ words should be greater than for MOP- words (max. amplitude, AUC, time-to-peak). (?)

mo.pla \(\gt\) mop.la

Are newborns sensitive to (violations of) the MOP?

Hypothesis 3: If newborns discriminate between MOP+ and MOP- (Hypothesis 1), they do so by processing the disyllabic structure of the word (not just the first syllable).

mop.pla \(\neq\) mop

Participants

  • Healthy, full term neonates.1
  • Born at the Àrea de Maternitat form Hospital Sant Joan de Déu (Barcelona), tested in their room.
Figure 1: Participant information.

Participants

  • Pilot (2025-02-05–2025-03-06): 13: Participants.
  • Experiment (2025-02-05–now): 50.
    • Excluded (< 10 min.): 18 crying, 3 bad capping.
    • Provided valid data: 31
    • Data quality ranges a lot between participants

Testing setup and procedure

Stimuli

CVCCV words: Onset + Vowel + Consonant cluster (CC) + Vowel

Table 1: Stimuli lists.
List Syllabification Words
List 1 ST (CV-CCV) MO-PLA, SA-KLO, TI-PLE, DE-KLI
DW (CVC-CV) MOP-LA, SAK-LO, TIP-LE, DEK-LI
DS (CVC) MOP, SAK, TIP, DEK
List 2 ST (CV-CCV) MO-KLA, SA-PLO, TI-KLE, DE-PLI
DW (CVC-CV) MOK-LA, SAP-LO, TIK-LE, DEP-LI
DS (CVC) MOK, SAP, TIK, DEP

Block design

Data analysis

MNE-NIRS (Python):

  1. Light intensity to optical density
  2. Automatic channel rejection based (SCI \(\geq\) .80)
  3. Motion arctifact correction (TDDR)
  4. Calculate \(\Delta\)HbO and \(\Delta\)HbO using the modified Beer-Lambert Law
  5. Band-pass filter (0.01-1.0 Hz)
  6. Block epoching (-5–30s), baseline correction, linear detrend
  7. Block averaging
  8. Participant rejection (\(geq\) 2 trials per condition)

Results

Results

Results

Results

Appendix

NIRS setup

  • NIRSport2 (NIRx), CW 760 nm & 850 nm
  • Sampling frequency 20.345 Hz (~0.05 s samples)
  • NIRScap: 8 channels LH, 8 channels RH

References

Bertoncini, Josiane, Ranka Bijeljac-Babic, Peter W Jusczyk, Lori J Kennedy, and Jacques Mehler. 1988. “An Investigation of Young Infants’ Perceptual Representations of Speech Sounds.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 117 (1): 21.
Bijeljac-Babic, Ranka, Josiane Bertoncini, and Jacques Mehler. 1993. “How Do 4-Day-Old Infants Categorize Multisyllabic Utterances?” Developmental Psychology 29 (4): 711.
Fló, Ana, Lucas Benjamin, Marie Palu, and Ghislaine Dehaene-Lambertz. 2022. “Sleeping Neonates Track Transitional Probabilities in Speech but Only Retain the First Syllable of Words.” Scientific Reports 12 (1): 4391.
Jusczyk, Peter W, and Carolyn Derrah. 1987. “Representation of Speech Sounds by Young Infants.” Developmental Psychology 23 (5): 648.
Luo, Huan, and David Poeppel. 2007. “Phase Patterns of Neuronal Responses Reliably Discriminate Speech in Human Auditory Cortex.” Neuron 54 (6): 1001–10.
Meyer, Lars. 2018. “The Neural Oscillations of Speech Processing and Language Comprehension: State of the Art and Emerging Mechanisms.” European Journal of Neuroscience 48 (7): 2609–21.